We just returned from a trip to France.  Of many highlights, the one which I have most exhaustively photographed is our visit to La Maison Picassiette, in Chartres.  One of the world's reknowned artist-created environments, Maison Picassiette was the creation of an eccentric (obviously!) man named Raymond Isidore (1900 - 1964).  A man of modest means and boundless vision, Isidore worked at various periods in his life at a foundry, a tramway company, as a road mender for the town of chartres, and finally as the caretaker for the town's cemetery.  As an artist and builder he was completely self-taught - what the French call an artist naif or singulier.  He was born and raised in Chartres, in the shadow of the town's famous cathedral.  He married Adrienne Dousset in 1924 and raised three children with her.  In 1929 he bought a long narow plot of ground and began to build a house for his family.  It was not until 1938 that something possessed Isidore to begin decorating the inside walls of his house with broken pieces of china, tile, shells and glass.  But once he began, he did not stop for twenty four years, until all the walls, ceilings and floors, inside and out,  were covered with gorgeous mosaics, sculptures and hand-painted murals.  The dazzling results follow.